


new heaven, new earth

by snsk



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 21:33:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9922994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snsk/pseuds/snsk
Summary: The next morning Phil yawns tiredly and rubs his eyes and it's very cold, it's such a rainy morning.





	

CLEOPATRA  
If it be love indeed, tell me how much.

ANTONY  
There's beggary in the love that can be reckoned.

***

“You know,” Phil says, “this could be a love story, if you let it.”

Dan looks up at the stars and shakes his head. Do it fast enough and they become a blur. “No more love stories,” he says. “They hurt. And none of them have happy endings.”

Phil shrugs easily. “Okay,” he says. That is the only time he brings it up.

***

They meet in English Literature.

“What can you say about Antony?” the professor asks. “Opinions, people. I want opinions.” She waves a hand around, peers up at them from over her glasses. “The honest, unvarnished truth: your impression of  Mark Antony.”

“My impression of Antony,” a boy two rows behind Phil repeats.

“Yes,” she agrees. “Yes, Mr-”

“Howell,” the boy says. “I think he was a proper idiot.”

Phil doesn't know he's opened his mouth until he's halfway through his sentence. “He did it all for _love._ ”

“Yeah, well,” the boy says. He shrugs. His eyes are bright, or it is the fluorescent lights of the classroom. “Love is a sham.”

***

“Love is a sham.”

The boy’s steps don't falter. “Yes.”

“Who broke _your_ heart?” Phil asks.

He smiles, only half-mouthed. “A girl.”

“I'm Phil,” says Phil.

The boy stops abruptly in his tracks, then. It might be because of Phil, or it could be because they've reached the coffee cart. “Dan,” Dan says.

“Hi, Dan,” Phil says.

“What do you drink?” Dan asks, instead of _Do you drink?_

***

Phil believes in love.

He's never been in love.

But here it is: it is hard not to, when your father stumbles down to your mother making toast in the morning, places cold hands on her waist and leans against her tiredly. That image becomes ingrained into your mind. That ideal. That _faith._

So Phil believes in love.

***

He's considered that it’s just not for him.

Nobody has made him _feel,_ italics and run on sentences, em dashes, but Charlie did, almost, until he didn't.

***

Sex is good, until it's boring.

***

“We could have sex,” Dan suggests. “I miss sex.”

“No,” Phil says immediately. The Ribena is sweet and lingering on his tongue. He focuses on that instead.

So this is not that kind of story.

***

Dan likes Radiohead and Mario Kart and Harry Potter, all at different intensities and emotional levels.

“Sorry,” he says. They are good enough friends now that Phil can tell he only says sorry when he is unrepentantly not sorry. “But you're wrong about OK Computer.”

“Am I?” Phil asks, just to watch him start indignantly up again.

***

He ends up calling Phil a dickhead three times in that conversation. His eyes are bright and alive, no fluorescence, and his mouth is wet.

Phil thinks he might miss sex, too.

***

“Who broke your heart?” Phil tries again.

“A girl,” Dan says.

He sighs.

He relents.

“We were together three years,” he says.

Phil is very neutral. “That's a long time.”

“It was a long _wasted_ time,” Dan says, bitterly. “Unpause, Lester.”

***

PJ likes Dan. Phil sees the way his eyes track him up and down.

PJ asks, “Is he-”

“He's single,” Phil says. “But he's not looking for anything-”

“It doesn't have to _be_ anything,” PJ says, smirking a bit, watching Dan, lazy and spread out and beautiful, on the sofa. He reaches for a glass. He notices Phil's expression.

***

Phil can't really bear the pity on his face, so he shoves him after a bit and says, “You could ask him, then, if you’re-”

PJ, since he's a good friend, gives up on flirting with Dan, after that. Dan, who'd been pretty much oblivious to it to begin with, raises his eyebrows at PJ’s sudden desire to sit on the old beanbag instead of the spot next to him, but leans into Phil easily as he reaches for a crisp.

***

There is a conversation under the stars.

***

CLEOPATRA  
Would she had never given you leave to come.

***

“An apartment closer to school would be easier,” Dan suggests. “And we could split the rent.”

Phil says, helplessly, “Yes.”

***

Dan in the morning, tousled hair and bare feet. Dan loud about cereal, singing odes to Thai food. Dan in the evening, fresh from a shower. Dan pacing the floorboards late at night. Dan at 3 am, warm as the floorboards are cold as Phil settles down sleepily beside him, just to keep him company.

***

“Let's watch how Disney, like, totally destroyed this remake,” Dan says, after class.

“I have plans,” Phil says. It's strange. The words taste strange. He's never had plans before. Days nights dusks dawns all ready and waiting for Dan.

“...Oh,” Dan says. “A-”

He clears his throat.

“Date? A date? Oh _wow_ , Phil. Really?”

Phil is suddenly so tired. “It's not such a strange concept,” he says. “I’m not _that_ repulsive.”

“I didn't mean that,” Dan says. “Phil-”

***

Dan doesn't say sorry when he means _sorry_. He hunches into the sofa you bought together at Ikea, small and huddled under a blanket, and says, “Have a good time.”

He says, “They're very lucky.”

He says, “Use protection!” and smiles half-mouth and you want to stay oh god do you want to stay.

***

The date goes swimmingly.

Areef has very nice eyes and no strong opinions on Kanye West.

***

“How did it go,” Dan whispers, when Phil drops tiredly down beside him. Phil had thought he was asleep; he is still huddled on his end. The lights are off, the TV’s muted.

“Alright,” Phil says. “It went alright.”

Dan stretches an ankle towards him, cat-like. Phil allows it to be burrowed under his thigh. They fall asleep like that, just like that.

***

The next morning Phil yawns tiredly and rubs his eyes and it's very cold, it's such a rainy morning and Dan is in the kitchen, brewing coffee.

Phil goes over to him, instinctive, and Dan says, “Here, you addict,” and his fingers close around Phil's as he hands him his mug. Phil dips his head onto his shoulder and they stay like that, the small pause before the day starts.

***

When Phil envisioned falling in love, he hadn't imagined so many undocumented pauses.

***

Mum says to Dan, “Come back soon, dear,” and Dan says, “Yes, Mrs Le- Kathryn,” and pinks a bit. He loves her. He is enamoured by her. She pinches a cheek gently and waves them off, and Phil thinks of Dan in the morning, sweet and sleepy and cold, entering the room and tucking himself in beside Phil where Phil grew up, all the nights he’d wished for something soft and sweet and real, like all of those dreams reincarnated into something with crusted eye-corners and icicle feet on Phil’s thighs, something terribly loved, something Phil could _never_ lo-

***

Classes start again and Martin asks Phil out, and Phil says yes sure why not.

“I don’t like Martin,” Dan says immediately. “He has shifty eyes.”

“Oh?” says Phil.

“And his nose is too long,” Dan affirms.

“You’re just upset he’s cutting into your Black Mirror time,” Phil says. “You can watch it without me, you know. I’ll catch up.”

“Perhaps,” Dan agrees, turning away to stuff his notes into his bag. They both know he won’t.

***

“Who broke your heart?” Phil asks, watching something on Facebook catch Dan’s eye, watching him click definitively off.

“A girl,” Dan says.

He considers.

“She cheated on me.”

“So love is a sham,” Phil says, very neutrally.

Dan asks, instead: “Do you think she loved me?”

Phil bites down on his first answer. His second is: “You were both very young when you got together.”

“That’s not an answer,” Dan observes.

“Yes,” Phil says. “The answer is: I don’t know.”

***

That is his _third_ answer.

***

CHARMIAN  
You think of him too much.

***

“He avoids you now,” Dan says. He sounds almost gleeful.

Phil watches Martin walk the opposite direction of his next class, which is in the corridor they’re using.

“He was very nice,” he says. “We had a nice time. He shouldn’t be- embarrassed, or anything, that it didn’t work out with him.”

The glee has been driven out of Dan’s voice. “Maybe the next one, then.”

***

Nobody had told Phil love included so much _waiting._

***

Waiting it is.

***

They reach the Starbucks near the Law faculty.

“One caramel macchiato,” says Dan. “One pumpkin latte.”

He turns to Phil. “Come back home with me.”

Phil waits.

“I mean, your parents are off to Florida,” Dan says. “And it’s my mum’s birthday. She’ll be itching for more attention.”

***

“Yes,” says Phil.

***

The train is chilly and underheated. Dan buries his hands in his coat and stares out the window. Phil picks up his phone and sees Olafur Arnalds. He knows what Muse and Radiohead mean; he knows what Kanye and Fall Out Boy and MIA and Tame Impala and FKA Twigs mean.

Now Dan is thinking, thinking, thinking; and that can be a slippery slope, a gripping whirlpool.

***

Dan’s mum tells Phil it’s lovely to have him; Dan’s little brother stares at him consideringly. Dan’s dad shows him his record collection; Dan’s grandma gives him the biggest slice of pudding.

Dan says, “We’re out to Jeff’s,” in the evening, and they say, “Okay.”

“We are?” Phil asks.

***

The walk to Jeff’s is starlit. Phil brings nothing up.

Dan stops, once.

“Are you cold?”

“No,” Phil says.

“Okay,” Dan says. “Phil?”

He looks very young, face bathed in the swarth of a streetlight’s orange warmth.

“It's okay,” Phil says. “I know.”

“Do you?” Dan says, low.

“Yes,” Phil says. “You used to be an Avril fan. I saw the posters in the cupboard.”

Dan reaches up and wraps his arms around Phil's neck. He holds him very close.

***

“Howell!” Jeff says. “How long has it been, man?”

“Not long enough,” Dan says, laughing. “Jeff, this is Phil.”

Phil meets Kayla, Janet, Luke. Suet Yi, Roger, Aaron. And then he meets a girl with smooth brown hair and an expression of slight trepidation when she says: “Dan.”

Dan smiles, half-mouthed. Phil had forgotten how that looked like.

“Hi,” he says. “This is Phil.”

***

They are walking back.

“Ask me again,” Dan says.

“Who broke your heart?” Phil asks.

***

“I don’t think it matters anymore,” Dan says, thoughtfully. The stars are as bright as his eyes.

***

CLEOPATRA  
I'll set a bourn how far to be beloved.

ANTONY   
Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr is snsknene! :D


End file.
